Ever since we retired seventeen years ago, my husband has taken over the kitchen. I have to make an appointment just thinking about cooking something. And when he hears me stirring around in there, he yells all the way from outside, mowing the grass, “Get out of my kitchen!”
Funny how the roles have changed. And funny ha, ha, that he thinks because he cooks, I’m supposed to clean up the big messes he makes. Oh, no! If he wants to play King of the Castle, he has to be his own scullery maid, because I’m the Queen! That’s how it works in the Queen’s castle.
But this week, I took over the kitchen. I cooked the sausage. I fried the eggs. I made the brown gravy. And I made the buttermilk biscuits! Without creating a blizzard like he did the last time he attempted to make biscuits and dumped flour all over the kitchen.
I’m not a southerner; I’m a pure-blooded Yankee from Newark, Delaware. My mother didn’t make biscuits; she made yeast rolls. I had to eat supper at my best friend’s house to get a homemade biscuit. Her family was from South Carolina, and her mother was the Michelangelo of making biscuits.
Before my husband kicked me out of the kitchen, I learned to make biscuits. Big, fluffy, golden brown biscuits that would make a cannibal drool. Okay. Maybe that’s a little extreme.
Growing up, my mother did all the cooking, and I gladly stayed out of her way. Daddy was happy. My brothers were happy. And I was ecstatic! I cleaned the house. She cooked. That’s the way we rolled at our house.
I finally learned how to cook, though, but making biscuits was never my life’s goal. There’s an art to it, and southerners turned it into a masterpiece, at least my mother-in-law did. She’s the one who taught me, but it took a lot of practice. And when I finally learned, I made biscuits every day. I shared them with my neighbors. I shared them with my friends. I wanted to share them with the whole world!
But I had to stop making them . . . everyone was getting fat! So, when my husband took over the kitchen, I was lucky to get a slice of bread tossed across the table. You know the saying, “Use it or lose it”. Well, I completely lost the art of making biscuits.
But this week, like being zapped by the Energizer bunny, I kicked my husband out of the kitchen, rolled up my sleeves, and cooked breakfast every morning; biscuits and all. The first morning, the dogs started gagging. The second morning, they were great, swimming in gravy. The third morning, my husband’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. But this blessed, sacred morning, the heavenly host began singing, “Hallelujah!”
Straight From the Heart 